The Taipei District Court today agreed to extend the detention of Taiwan People's Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) on suspicion of accepting bribes from real-estate developers during his tenure as Taipei mayor.
The court said the decision came amid fears over possible collusion in falsifying testimony that would undermine the efforts of prosecutors to investigate the case.
Photo: Chen Tsai-ling, Taipei Times
Prosecutors suspect that Ko contravened the Anti-Corruption Act (貪污治罪條例) by accepting bribes from real-estate developers and using his supervisory role to benefit others during his second term as Taipei mayor from 2018 to 2022.
Ko has been detained and held incommunicado since Sept. 5 before prosecutors sought to extend his detention for another two months.
A court hearing on the extension was originally scheduled for yesterday, but it was rescheduled for today due to Typhoon Kong-rey.
The prosecutors' success in extending Ko's detention came as no surprise, as the Taipei District Court earlier this week approved prosecutors' requests to extend the detention of other major suspects in the case.
They include Sheen Ching-jing (沈慶京), chairman of the Core Pacific Group, which is in charge of the controversial Core Pacific City redevelopment project, and Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇).
Prosecutors have alleged Sheen paid bribes of NT$47.4 million (US$1.48 million) to sway city government officials to abnormally increase the floor area ratio (FAR) — the amount of floor space a developer can build on a given plot of land — for a project Sheen was involved in.
Sheen was redeveloping the site formerly occupied by the Core Pacific City shopping mall in Songshan District (松山), and increasing the FAR would mean Sheen could sell more space in the project.
Ying has been believed to have acted as a go-between between Sheen and high-ranking officials, including Ko, and then-deputy Taipei mayor Pong Cheng-sheng (彭振聲), who the court has also ordered detained for the second time.
The TPP has argued the allegations against Ko are a politically motivated prosecution by the the Democratic Progressive Party government.
AGING: While Japan has 22 submarines, Taiwan only operates four, two of which were commissioned by the US in 1945 and 1946, and transferred to Taiwan in 1973 Taiwan would need at least 12 submarines to reach modern fleet capabilities, CSBC Corp, Taiwan chairman Chen Cheng-hung (陳政宏) said in an interview broadcast on Friday, citing a US assessment. CSBC is testing the nation’s first indigenous defense submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, Narwhal), which is scheduled to be delivered to the navy next month or in July. The Hai Kun has completed torpedo-firing tests and is scheduled to undergo overnight sea trials, Chen said on an SET TV military affairs program. Taiwan would require at least 12 submarines to establish a modern submarine force after assessing the nation’s operational environment and defense
A white king snake that frightened passengers and caused a stir on a Taipei MRT train on Friday evening has been claimed by its owner, who would be fined, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. A person on Threads posted that he thought he was lucky to find an empty row of seats on Friday after boarding a train on the Bannan (Blue) Line, only to spot a white snake with black stripes after sitting down. Startled, he jumped up, he wrote, describing the encounter as “terrifying.” “Taipei’s rat control plan: Release snakes on the metro,” one person wrote in reply, referring
The coast guard today said that it had disrupted "illegal" operations by a Chinese research ship in waters close to the nation and driven it away, part of what Taipei sees a provocative pattern of China's stepped up maritime activities. The coast guard said that it on Thursday last week detected the Chinese ship Tongji (同濟號), which was commissioned only last year, 29 nautical miles (54km) southeast of the southern tip of Taiwan, although just outside restricted waters. The ship was observed lowering ropes into the water, suspected to be the deployment of scientific instruments for "illegal" survey operations, and the coast
Taiwan’s two cases of hantavirus so far this year are on par with previous years’ case numbers, and the government is coordinating rat extermination work, so there should not be any outbreaks, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said today in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper). An increase in rat sightings in Taipei and New Taipei City has raised concerns about the spread of hantavirus, as rats can carry the disease. In January, a man in his 70s who lived in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) tested positive posthumously for hantavirus, Taiwan’s
RSS